News

As we are all aware, a devastating wildfire is ravaging peoples' homes and livelihoods in Fort McMurray, Alberta. The fire threatens to expand significantly before there is any chance of bringing it under control. In the meantime, Fort McMurray has been evacuated and tens of thousands of people require temporary shelter and support. Many of those people are union members and it looks like many will be unable to return to their homes for weeks or months.

As a measure of immediate solidarity, I would like to encourage you to donate to the Red Cross for its Alberta Relief program. Individual members of CALL/ACAMS – including myself- have already made personal donations‎. Individual contributions are tax deductible and will be matched by both the Government of Alberta and the Government Canada, and so are particularly valuable.

In recent years, the phrase “right to work” has come to be synonymous with a right-wing agenda in the United States to undermine the trade union movement by prohibiting union security agreements, restricting the payment of union dues, and weakening the economic power of unions. Ironically, far from providing a general guarantee of employment to people seeking work, so-called “right-to-work” laws restrict freedom of association by limiting the kinds of contractual agreements unions can make with employers and, in many cases, have resulted in lower wages and benefits for workers.

This event, co-sponsored by Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights (CLAIHR), the Centre for Labour Management Relations, Faraday Law, and Goldblatt Partners, seeks to re-claim the “right to work” by re-framing work as a public good, rather than a commodity. Such a shift has far-reaching implications:

If the right to work is a human right, what does this mean for the right of workers to participate in productive activities and to obtain an adequate standard of living?

What are the implications for national and international regulatory systems, as well as transnational migration?

How can such a shift help organized labour and non-unionized workers to respond to growing conditions of precarity and the erosion of decent work?

We will explore these questions, and more, at a panel discussion of trade unionists, workers' activists, and labour experts.

Pursuant to Article 11.2 of the Constitution, this is Notice that at the Business Meeting on June 13, 2015 to be held at the conference in Winnipeg at the Hotel Fort Garry, the following Constitutional Amendments will be proposed: